And it's not really "normal" for Colorado to have quakes of that size, either. In fact, USGS says it was the largest they've recorded in the region, but it was too far from any population centers to make the news anywhere but in Colorado.

It makes me wonder where else in the US we're going to have big quakes. Are these two events "foreshocks" to warn of another, much larger? I don't think so -- anyway, I hope not... but still...

Back on March 14, 2011 House Majority Leader Eric Cantor defended Republican proposals to cut spending for the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Geological Survey.LinkGuess whose congressional district the epicenter of yesterday's east coast earthquake was in?

If you guessed Eric Cantor, give yourself a gold star.

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture."-- Thomas Paine: The Crisis No. V (March 21, 1778)

Apparently, both the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral in DC sustained a fair amount of seismic/structural damage. The Washington Monument is closed until further notice. The National Cathedral (which lost some finials from one (or more?) of its pinnacles and sustained damage to one or more of its flying buttresses) is closed to visitors until further notice.

Damage to the flying buttresses is troubling because one church in San Francisco that suffered significant damage in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 added flying buttresses as part of the church's seismic retrofitting in the wake of the quake. I suspect, though, that San Francisco's seismic standards are higher than those in DC. And I know the National Cathedral's buttresses are much older than those at the SF church in question.